Cherry Tomatoes

Welcome back to another installment of the trials and tribulations of my organic garden. What comes to mind when you hear the term “late bloomers”? Adolescence, right? Well in my garden, it now refers to my tomatoes – the quintessential late bloomers. You see tomatoes normally take seventy to eighty days to ripen once the started plant (not seeds) are placed in the ground. My tomato plants were quite large when I planted them into the garden. In fact, my tomato plants were eight to ten inches high when I planted them so they had a great start in life. I also started them right on time for our zone which was the third week in May. So, there was no excuse when these plants were not producing. They were pruned, staked, tied, weeded, fed organic plant food, fertilized and lovingly watered; yet no fruit. I was about to give up hope as we were well past eighty days and actually into the nineties. We did see a flower, so there was a sign of life, but no cherry tomatoes when out of nowhere they started to grow!

Now these were not your traditional cherry tomatoes that were growing – these were turbo cherry tomatoes the size of plums. The oddity here, and there is always an oddity with my garden this year, is that I planted two varieties of cherry tomatoes and both produced fruit much larger than expected.  They produced delicious, meaty cherry tomatoes that have the ripe sweetness of homegrown tomatoes you hope for but they are so large you can slice them for salads or sandwiches. So there we were in late August with only had a handful of jumbo-sized cherry tomatoes that must have sparked a growth competition of sorts because suddenly all my tomato plants were taking off.

I had to be staking and pruning daily to keep up with the rapid growth. So, at a stage in the season when everyone else was harvesting their bounty I was still tending my crop. The pruning and tying was constant as the plants kept shooting up; however there was still no fruit. In fact several plants had to have more than one steak, as their branches were too heavy for one mere piece of wood.  Suddenly at around day hundred and twenty, we got tomatoes. It is now mid- September and the branches are laden with green tomatoes at different stages of ripening. Given our frost zone I will eventually have to pick them and allow them to ripen in the house.

My favorite of all the varieties of tomatoes I grew was a single heirloom plant. It produced a tomato of such quality I have never seen its equal. The skin is pink with a golden amber stripe that matched its pulp. The fruit is tender, meaty, and there is very little liquid in the tomato. I think I’ll save the seeds and try my hand at starting my own plants next year.  With all these tomatoes, we are now faced with the dilemma of how to enjoy our bounty and the prospects are endless: marinara and chili sauce, bruschetta, soup, oh my!

My organic tomato farming misadventures this season have not deterred me in the least and next year I will attempt the mother of all tomatoes the illustrious San Marzano. As always your comments, suggestions and feedback are very welcome. Happy organic gardening!